Not a political post, but something that’s been weighing on me.
About a year ago, I picked up a little record player. Don’t know why – I didn’t own any records. But the price was good, the player was portable, and I figured that it would be a fun thing to own.
To fill my collection, I scoured the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores of the city and picked through hundreds of albums that had differing levels of popularity, but now all succumbed to identical decay. A couple of artists were over-represented (Loggins and Messina, Kenny Rogers, others), and there were a lot of classical music albums, but I was able to find some great albums by great bands (Who’s Next by The Who) as well as some albums with one or two songs that I recognized by great bands (Three Dog Night, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Doobie Brothers). One of those albums was Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, the first album by Simon and Garfunkel.
There were two songs I recognized from this album: He Was My Brother and The Sounds of Silence. Yet this The Sounds of Silence is not the one you know. For one, the other song is called The Sound of Silence. For another, this version is only Paul and Art and a guitar. When I first heard it, I stopped. This was something new and it forced me to listen to each and every one of the lyrics. And then I got up and reset the needle and listened to it again. And again. And I picked up the album and found the below:
